Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Stupid Enough To Be Ivy League

Maybe there's something to this whole "Bush is stupid" thing. After all, he went to Yale.

Stage weapons will again be allowed in University theatrical productions, in a reversal of last week's ban, Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said Tuesday morning.

Administrators decided Monday afternoon to require that audiences instead be informed of the use of stage weapons before the start of every performance, she said. (Yale Daily News)

I'm sure since you are all intelligent human beings you're wondering how the Yale drama department will handle the delicate task of informing theater-goers about the props.

Well, worry no more, because C-SM has acquired through unnamed sources a draft of the announcement to appear in this weekend's performance of Julius Caesar:

Achtung!

The weapons you see may look real but they're not.Also, the actors you see may look like Romans,but they're not. And the stage sets may look real,but in fact they're really just two-dimensional.

Yale's action over-rides the earlier decision by Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg to ban all realistic prop weapons from Yale productions following the VA Tech massacres. Rather than admit the idea was insulting to students, the admin hid behind the common excuse of not wanting to infringe free speech.

I wonder ... if realistic plastic weapons represent free speech, can students begin protecting themselves by asserting their 1st Amendment, as opposed to 2nd Amendment, right to carry real weapons to class?

Anyway, Trachtenberg is defiant despite the wrist-slapping:

"I think people should start thinking about other people rather than trying to feel sorry for themselves and thinking that the administration is trying to thwart their creativity. They're not using their own intelligence. … We have to think of the people who might be affected by seeing real-life weapons."

Unbelievable. We are forced to live in a world of falseness and foolishness, of shameless pandering to the weakest among us at the expense of the strong, so we can feel appropriately sorry, appropriately tolerant, appropriately spineless.

And this is a school that's supposed to turn out the leaders of tomorrow? They won't be able to lead their way out of a paper bag. They'll be too worried that ripping the bag apart might offend people who like paper bags the way they are.

"Thank you for the "Voice of the Victims films. The students really liked them, and it means so much to them to hear real stories and not watch a cheesy drama like so many other videos."
— High school teacher.